Hi everybody. I've posted on here a few times about my tree image. Well really it's a forest. The picture is 576X384 and contains 20 + trees with semi-transparent leaves. Everything except the sword is Bryce. The sword (which is still not complete) was made with Wings 3D. The image is still not complete. I still need to work on the sword textures and the log. I may make the sword bigger and move it and the log closer to the camera. The image took 18 hours, 46 minutes, and 41 seconds to render, with true ambience and depth of field. The Rays per Pixel was set to 4. The final output size might be 3456 X 2304 pixels (not sure yet) This is most complex image I have ever produced and hope to make a print of it once its finished. Any and all comments or ideas to make this a better picture are appreciated. Thanks for your time and support. Sincerely, David

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1183644

My advice is not to use true ambience. I have gotten away from using the premium settings and found ways to simulate them the quality is better and the render times are much lower. Also needs more light on my computer . The attached picture used 21 lights to get the effect there. If you look closely there are soft shadows and there is ambience but on areas hidden it is still dark. Experement more with the light and spending an extra hour on lighting might save you many hours rendering. Download the zenith lighting system and do what I did disect it then experement and make your own light rigs.

Dont use a straight light,use the cone spotlight. Make the color yellow instead of white. It looks more natural.

Here are the light settings. I used soft shadows and soft edges to get rid of the flat edge. I also made volume visable. Do not use true ambience. It only took 30 min to render at premim settings.

That is one way-kewl sword!

Electroglyph thanks for the cone spotlight and settings. That is exactly the type of effect I was loking for, but did not know how to create it. I second Brysters opinion. That is one way cool sword. I'll look into some other lighting solutions, but I do like how it renders with True Ambience. David

Attached Link: http://www.knology.net/~electroglyph/flamberge6.zip

Thanks Much! My first attempt at a basket hilt. It took me a week to figure out how but about 6 hours to actually do it. It's 5.2 mb (2.5 Zipped)untextured 3ds. You can download it from the link.

Pedrith, although you like the look of TA, it's wise to remember it's only real benefit is in realism and accuracy.

Personally, if that scene of yours were mine; I'd freak-out at the thought of doing it with TA (it's just 'too' slow for that kind of scene).

If I were you, to light that scene; I'd switch-off TA and even the Sun/Moon. Instead, I'd use just one VERY strong but VERY distant radial, carefully tweak the Volumetric settings for it, and use Volumetric-World. Then just tweak the ambience level of your materials to give the impression of ambient light. It would still take a while to render, but nothing like using TA. Len.

*BTW, I meant to say Spot, not Radial.

Len.
(Brain-dead today, again)

Penrith i noticed something else that may help with cutting your render time down..

Thos trees in the background of the forrest, if you rendered just those to start of with, then use the save image as in file then applied them to a 2d plane and placed it where you want them you'll find once you add the other trees and everything else your render time will be shorter..just a thought.

Mind you i'm no expert at using bryce, don't use it now just give advice ;)

Message edited on: 03/24/2006 11:38

Dear David, Your post was very inspiring and this is my 15 minutes solution to your theme. I've used a different approach (in Bryce 4, that I prefer to Bryce 5.5). The trees, the roots and the grass on the bottom of the trees are made with the terrain editor, with appropriate textures (I've used also one of the Bryce 'grass' defalut textures that you have used on your artwork). The stones are standard stones generated by Bryce with appropriate texture deafalut Bryce texture. The sky is one of the default skyes named "False Down", with Haze at 99 Fog at 3 26 and Sun Control at Azimuth 276,7 Altitude -9. The spotlight on the sword is a Cylinder Light with value 52 and 29. It is very near to the sword. The sword came from Renderosity Free Stuff: it is for Bryce and it is named 'Celtic Sword' by tonylynch. I've retextured it to add realism on the object. The volumetric light is fake. It is made in Photoshop using the Renderosity Bryce tutorial named 'Short cut atmospherics for Bryce' by orbital (see page 7-8-9). With Potoshop I've add also some glare just to add atmospere. All the operations take me around 15/20 minutes, besides the Bryce reder time. The original render is 864x610 in "AntiAliasing Fine Art" mode and take me no more than 10 minutes. This is the final result :)

BTW: writing the description of my procedures take me more time than do the art... ;) Message edited on: 03/24/2006 17:37

Is it me or does that first image in this thread look too dark?

Message edited on: 03/25/2006 13:02

The reason I mention that is your monitor may set too much briteness. Then it would look fine to you. But too dark to most others. Either that or my monitor is set to dark in which case my gallery items would look nicley contrasted to me but washed out to others.